Henri Young stole five dollars from a post office and ended up going to prison - to the most famous, or infamous, prison of them all: Alcatraz. He tried to escape, failed, and spent three years and two months in solitary confinement - in a dungeon, with no light, no heat and no toilet. Milton Glenn, the assistant warden, who was given free reign by his duty-shirking superior, was responsible for Young's treatment. Glenn even took a straight razor and hobbled Young for life. After three years and two months, Young was taken out of solitary confinement and put with the rest of the prisoners. Almost immediately, Young took a spoon and stabbed a fellow prisoner in the neck, killing him. Now, Young is on trial for murder, and if he's convicted he'll go to the gas chamber. An eager and idealistic young attorney, James Stamphill, is given this impossible case, and argues before a shocked courtroom that Young had a co-conspirator. The true murderer, he says, was Alcatraz.

SYNOPSIS
Year 1997. The airplane of the president of the United States is kidnapped by a radical group, but it manages to survive and is alone in the streets of New York, where Manhattan has become a huge prison of high security. Given the impossibility of launching a conventional action, for fear of killing the president, it is decided to send a secret agent to rescue him. The chosen one is "Serpent" Plissken (Kurt Russell), a well-known convict who everyone considered dead.